MENTIONED BY iESCHINES AND DEMOSTHENES. 239 



of it by that some-time orator turned into a rhetorician. It is indeed most unreasonable to 

 suppose that iEschines or his friends would lay claim to a statue, which the writings of that 

 orator, wherever they were known, would indicate as belonging to Solon, and the excellence 

 of the design and workmanship show that no such plagiarism or piracy was committed in 

 a later age. 



On these grounds, I conclude, with as much confidence as I can feel in such a case 

 that the draped figure of the Museo Borhonico, which has attracted so much notice by its 

 artistic beauty, is an excellent representative of the celebrated Salaminian statue of Solon, 

 which is mentioned so emphatically by ^Eschines and Demosthenes. Indeed I may say that 

 from the moment when I first became acquainted with that statue and compared it with the 

 passages I have cited, its identification by means of its peculiar attitude suggested itself to 

 me as obvious and inevitable. And I hope that no one will consider this an unimportant 

 result because it is an almost self-evident conclusion, when it is properly indicated. We 

 have seen how scholars and artists have misled one another on this point. And when we 

 reflect that man, by the very constitution of his nature, connects his future hopes with the 

 firmness of his belief in the history of the past, we must always prize the tangible proofs 

 which are furnished by monumental or documentary evidence. It is not therefore unim- 

 portant that we should be able to recognise, among the spoils of time rescued from the 

 ruins of Herculaneum, the figure which the Athenians, in the days of their greatest orators, 

 had often seen in the market-place of Salamis, and which stood there as a commemoration 

 at once of their great lawgiver and poet, and of the reconquest of that glorious island, 

 without which, as a place of refuge for their wives and children, they could hardly have 

 fought and won the great sea fight for the liberty of Hellas. 



